Northwest Passage

CHAPTER I

THIS BOOK has not been written to prove a case. It is not an argument against what is called the crucible of war; nor is it an attempt to show that no man has ever been tempered in that crucible without bearing one of war’s inevitable scars—without having become cruel, an ingrate, a wastrel; diseased, selfish, self-deluded, a drunkard; contemptuous of what is good, or without faith in God or mankind. It may, at times, seem to hint that patriots, steadfast defenders of their country against enemies in warpaint or scarlet, are still called patriots when, in times of peace, they sit traitorously irresolute or quiescent before those equally dangerous foes that lurk in the shadows of all wars—such foes as greed, short-sightedness, and the stupidity and cowardice of backyard statesmen.

My purpose has been more simple. It has been my lot to have some contact with a man who was remarkable and strange; and by chance I encountered him at periods important in the early history of my country. Given the proper guidance, he might have been a greater prince than Jenghiz Khan. To me, at times, he seemed almost a god: at other times possessed by demons. Yet I think that at his best he benefited his country more substantially than have warriors, statesmen and authors of greater renown; and at his worst, I suspect he fell no lower than any one of us might fall, provided we had possessed his vision and energy to begin with, and then had undergone the same exertions, the same temptations, the same ingratitudes and disappointments he endured. Therefore it has seemed to me worth while to write my recollections of the days when he fascinated me as no man has before or since.

§

In telling this story, I would like above all things to be truthful; yet at the very outset I find it difficult to remember accurately the beginning of the chain of circumstances that most affected my life.

I might, for example, blame my troubles on my habit of sketching scenes and faces in a commonplace book; I might ascribe them to my father’s insistence that I go to Harvard College; or I might with equal accuracy say they were due to John Singleton Copley’s words of encouragement. Some people, as I shall show, blamed Hunk Marriner and Cap Huff for visiting me in my college room in Cambridge and encouraging me to mock the Board of Overseers. I myself, for a long time, blamed Elizabeth Browne and my own youthful inability to keep my mouth shut. But it would be as reasonable to blame the terrible food in the Harvard Commons in the year 1759, or the French King for using St. Francis Indians to help him gain control of North America.

If any of those ingredients—my desire to sketch, Harvard College, its terrible food, John Singleton Copley, Cap Huff, Elizabeth Browne or the St. Francis Indians—had been lacking, my troubles, no doubt, would never have commenced, and I might have become a Portsmouth merchant, living comfortably and dully in a tall brick house and admiring the making of money, no matter how made.

Even though these subjects seem irrelevant, I must touch on all of them; for they have a bearing on what happened later.

§

Both my mother and my father had long lived in Kittery. My mother’s home, before she married, was the square one at Pipestave Landing, the beautiful point which, near Salmon Falls, marks the limit of navigation on the Piscataqua River at low tide. Her great grandfather Richard Nason built that house in 1632.

My father, Humphrey Towne, owned a rope-walk at Kittery, opposite Badger’s Island, where John Langdon of Portsmouth built his vessels. In his rope-walk my father made hawsers and cables for the King’s ships—cables so large that when one was moved, eighty seamen took it on their shoulders and walked it through the streets, so that it had the appearance of a monstrous blue-legged centipede. Most of my father’s work, however, was done for John Langdon’s brigs, which helps to account for my name—Langdon Towne.

My father was a kind man, but inclined to be impatient with those whose opinions were at variance with his own. This trait, seemingly, was inherited. His own great grandfather William had removed from Ipswich to Kittery in a fit of impatience. Three of William’s sisters, Rebecca, Sarah and Mary, all women of probity and good sense, had denounced the vicious children responsible for the beginning of the witchcraft delusion in Massachusetts, and as a result had themselves been put on trial for witchcraft. Rebecca was acquitted: then called back and convicted because of the pretended agonies of those same terrible children. Then Sarah was convicted for openly upholding Rebecca, and both were hanged. At that William, really losing his temper, loaded his wife, his belongings and his eight children on three cows and a horse and removed to the eastward. He refused to stop until he crossed the Piscataqua River and came to Kittery where, as he put it, he could breathe the air of Maine, uncontaminated by the choking flavor of Massachusetts imbeciles and murderers.

Our home was on Mendum’s Point in Kittery, handy to Badger’s Island and the main ferry to Portsmouth; and beginning with the days when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I had gone up and down the Piscataqua between Kittery and Pipestave Landing, sometimes afoot and sometimes by canoe, to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with my grandfather, or to fish in the spring of the year, or to shoot geese and deer in the autumn. That was how I had come to know Hunk Marriner and Cap Huff.

Hunk’s mother, Anna Marriner, owned canoes which she operated from a wharf near our house, and was called the commodore of the Kittery canoe fleet that daily brought fish to Spring Wharf in Portsmouth.

She was a playful woman, addicted to jesting and practical jokes; and it was one of her whims to name her children after prominent residents of Portsmouth. She named them for Governor Benning Wentworth, his brother Hunking, Samuel Langdon who became president of Harvard, Archibald Macpheadris who built the first ironworks in this country at Dover, Judge Peter Livius and others, most of them proud and wealthy Episcopalians. Thus she was anathema to Portsmouth society, which was composed exclusively of Episcopalians who had no relish for any sort of gaiety except their own. Ordinary citizens of Portsmouth and Kittery thought highly of her, however, because she worked hard, brought plenty of fresh fish to Spring Wharf, and retained the affectionate regard of her children, which was more than most of the Portsmouth Episcopalians were able to do.

Hunking Marriner had inherited some of his mother’s playfulness, as well as her love for hard work; and although he worked at nothing but fishing and shooting, and was therefore called lazy and a loafer, he worked three times harder than any merchant ever worked at less exhausting labors, and had six times as much fun.

He shot, as the saying goes, for the market; and I have seen him come down the river, in the fall of the year, his canoe loaded to the gunwales with Canada geese, brant, black ducks and teal, all shot in one day. His skill was such that he could successfully stalk Canada geese in an open field.

Knowing my partiality for gunning, he took me with him for company, and we shot geese, deer and bear together as far north as Dover and as far east as Arundel, where I had relatives. Through him I met Cap Huff, another resident of Kittery, who made a living carrying packages express from Portsmouth to Falmouth. When business was slack, Cap joined us, claiming he did it for a rest. He was a prodigious eater, able to devour two dozen twelve-inch trout at one sitting; and it was his contention that a single goose was the most embarrassing piece of game a gunner could bring home, since it was more than one man could comfortably eat, but not enough for two.

It is singular but true that Hunk and Cap took more interest in my efforts to sketch than did any other person in Kittery or Portsmouth. My father and my older brothers seemed convinced that drawing was a waste of time, if not downright womanly, like painting on china, or embroidering. My mother, I had reason to think, was secretly pleased at my scratchings; but at the same time she saw no reason for depicting subjects she considered unpleasant. A sketch of our kitchen, in which we lived, seemed to her to lack dignity. She preferred a sketch of our best room, which we never sat in and seldom saw.

Hunk and Cap, on the other hand, breathed anxiously down my neck while I struggled to get things on paper. Some of their suggestions were worthless, but others showed their observation had been better than mine.

Wouldn’t those birches look better, Hunk asked, if you put black triangles, like brackets, where the branches sprout out of the trunk?

It was Cap who showed me that to draw an impression of a thing is sometimes better than to draw an exact likeness. Listen, he said, that aint the way a partridge looks when he’s in a hurry! He’s all pale, like a ghost, and twice as long as what he’d measure if you put a yardstick on him.

§

It was in 1757 that my father decided to send me to Harvard College. What led him to do so, I was never sure. My two older brothers were in the rope-walk, so there was no room for me. I had been sent to Major Samuel Hale’s Grammar School in Portsmouth and had become friendly with all the young Episcopalians; and it may be my father figured a Harvard education would provide me with a business opening that would be advantageous to the whole family.

If that was what he thought, he was probably right. Nearly all of those Episcopalian men of Portsmouth had gone to Harvard. We were Congregationalists, and it was almost a miracle when a Congregationalist was admitted by Episcopalians of Portsmouth as a social equal. Yet as soon as I was safely enrolled in Harvard, the Portsmouth Episcopalians seemed willing to accept me as one of themselves, whether I wished to be accepted or not.

It is barely possible I was sent to Harvard because my mother had hopes of seeing me a clergyman, just as every mother, seemingly, at some time dreams of her son in a pulpit, discoursing musically to weeping congregations. I mention this suspicion because there was rumor in Kittery and Portsmouth to the effect that I proposed to enter the ministry after leaving Harvard. This rumor may have been due to remarks which my mother let drop; or it may have been due to the erroneous belief that Harvard was a sort of religious institution, and that nearly every young man who went there from smaller towns in those days became a clergyman.

In my case there were three good reasons why the rumor had no foundation. For one thing, no system of Divinity or Ethics was taught in the College while I was there. For another, my aptitude for drawing inclined me toward the classes of the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Under him I studied Natural and Experimental Philosophy, which matters were of small worth to a clergyman, but of great value to me—Pneumatics, Hydrostatics, Mechanics, Statics, Optics; the doctrine of Proportions; the principles of Algebra, Conic Sections, Plane and Spherical Trigonometry; the general principles of Mensurations, Planes and Solids; the principles of Astronomy and Geography; the doctrine of the Spheres; the use of the Globes; the motions of the Heavenly Bodies according to the hypotheses of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe and Copernicus; the division of the world into its various kingdoms; the use of the Maps; and so on. It was from him that I first heard mention of the Northwest Passage, which was to loom so large in my life.

The third and best reason why I never studied divinity was that I had no desire to do so.

Nevertheless, the rumor persisted in Portsmouth, and before long it got me into real trouble. That’s one reason why I have always hated rumors.

CHAPTER II

IN THE SUMMER of 1759, when Hunk Marriner and Cap Huff unexpectedly visited me in Cambridge, the College would have been something of an eyeopener to those who thought of it as a nest of budding clergymen.

It was not, as the reformer Whitefield had implied a few years before, a mere seminary of Paganism; but on warm nights in the spring of the year it was likely to be a tumultuous place because of the determination of the students to show their disapproval whenever they received a bad supper in the Commons. Since this was a nightly occurrence, there was almost a regular evening hullabaloo, followed by the ringing of bells and often a sprightly throwing of brickbats against the door of a Tutor.

Edicts and warnings were issued by the Board of Overseers of the College against these frequent disorders, complaining that there were combinations among the undergraduates for the perpetration of unlawful acts; that students were guilty of being absent from their chambers at unseasonable times of night; that the loose practice of going and staying out of town without leave must cease. The students must, the Overseers insisted, make an end of profane cursing and swearing. There could be no more frequenting of alehouses; no more fetching of liquors to the chambers of undergraduates; no further entering into extravagant and enormous expenses at taverns for wine, strong beer and distilled spirits.

Since it never seemed to occur to the Board of Overseers to see that our food was improved, the disorders naturally continued.

It even became the fashion to walk forth, on a warm evening, in search of disorders. The searchers were seldom disappointed; but when they were, they generously provided disorders of their own to keep late-comers from being disappointed too.

§

My rooms were on the top floor of a small house on Brattle Street; for since there were 134 students in Harvard at that time, and since only 90 could be accommodated in Massachusetts Hall, the rest of us were obliged to lodge where we could.

It was late on a June afternoon, a little before the Commons hour, that I heard my name hoarsely spoken in the street below. When I went to the open window and peered out, I saw one of my classmates pointing up at my room. Beside him Hunk Marriner and Cap Huff, all sweaty and dusty, stared upward with mouths agape.

At my shouted invitation they stumbled up the dark and narrow stairs and pushed their way into the room, seeming to fill it to overflowing, not only with their bodies and their muskets and the packages which each carried, but with a singular ripe odor compounded of rum and a musty smell unfamiliar to me.

What’s that smell? I asked, when I had made them welcome.

Smell? Cap said. Smell? I don’t smell nothing, only these books here. He waved a huge hand at my desk.

What you smell, Hunk said, might prob’ly be either us or these skins—five sea-otter and twelve sables. Cap got ’em off to the eastward somewheres, and we’re taking ’em to Boston to sell to Captain Callendar.

Well, I said, you’re in luck! Who’d you get ’em from?

Oh, Cap said indifferently, I just stumbled across ’em, and so I picked ’em up.

Why didn’t you sell ’em in Portsmouth?

Cap’s reply was impatient. Listen: there’s times I wisht I’d never bothered to pick up one of these skins. Every time anybody mentions ’em, there’s as much talk about ’em as there’d be about a cart-load of gold horseshoes. Prob’ly it’s those skins you smell, the way Hunk says, but don’t give ’em another thought, because we’re going into Boston as soon as we get something to eat. Then you wont smell ’em any more.

If you’re going to eat, I said, I’ll go out and eat with you.

Hunk shook his head. One of the reasons we stopped here was so we could leave our muskets while we go to Boston. The other reason was we didn’t have any money, and we wont have any till we sell the skins. We thought maybe you’d have some.

I haven’t, I said. This is the end of the year, and nobody has any. You’ll have to go over to Commons with me for supper. Maybe you wont like the food, but it can’t be helped.

We’ll like it, Cap assured me. Anybody that’s hungry likes anything, and I’m hungry enough to eat a porcupine, quills and all.

They were not, Hunk protested, suitably dressed to appear in polite society; but this wasn’t true, for they had on their city clothes—homespun breeches, gray woolen stockings and towcloth shirts—and carried brown coats tied to their belts in back. Thus a little brushing made them presentable, aside from the wrinkles in their coats and the musty flavor of stale sea-otter pelts that clung persistently to them.

Noticeable as was this faint perfume, it was wholly submerged, when we entered Commons, by a noisome fragrance that struck against us in waves as we walked down the aisle. These surges of ripeness seemed propelled against us by an undercurrent of grumbling that rose from all the tables, frequently increasing to a noisy angry clamor, only to subside again to discontented mutterings.

When we seated ourselves, it was evident that Cap and Hunk might have worn buckskin hunting clothes and coonskin caps without exciting comment; for the attention of all the students at my own table and those adjoining was riveted on the pies which were being served. They had been baked in deep dishes, about the size of a barber’s bowl; and whenever one of them was placed before a newcomer, all his neighbors leaned forward to watch it opened. In every case the owner, after piercing the protective covering, used forefinger, thumb and nose in the supreme gesture of loathing, while all adjacent colleagues groaned eloquently in unison. This, then, accounted for the resurgent clamor; and when we in turn received our own pies and opened them, we had little hope of containing our own emotion.

On the instant that I punctured the crust of mine, a hot and nauseous smell gushed upward—a smell so ripely evil that it caught at the throat and at the stomach too.

At the sight of my face, all the others at our table joined in the prevalent loud groan.

For God’s sake, what’s in it? I asked Wingate Marsh, a classmate.

Carrion! Marsh said. Carrion!

Look here, I said to him, these friends of mine walked all the way from Portsmouth today. Isn’t there anything fit to eat?

Not one damned thing! Marsh said. There’s nothing but this pie—carrion pie! Then his eyes fixed themselves amazedly on Cap Huff, who sat beside me.

Cap had neatly folded back the crust of his pie, and was eating heartily. Hunk also delved into his with no sign of repugnance.

Hold on! I protested. Don’t eat that! You’ll be poisoned! We can’t leave the table till the tutors give the word, not unless we want to be fined five shillings; but if you’ll wait, I’ll borrow some money and we’ll go to the Tavern and get something to eat.

What’s wrong with this? Cap asked. He scraped his bowl with his spoon; then looked amiably around the incredulously staring table. Maybe mine was better’n what you had. Anyways, I aint more than took the edge off my appetite, and if there’s anybody wants to get rid of his pie, I’ll trade him for it.

He eyed my friends innocently. I’ll trade a drink of rum for every pie. Tomorrow night I’ll be coming out of Boston with some rum, and you can come around to Langdon Towne’s room and collect.

With one accord the eleven other men at the table pushed their pies toward Cap. He took them all, arranging them in a semicircle in front of Hunk and himself.

What would you figure was in these pies? he asked, as he smiled blandly at my classmates.

Matthew Weaver of Watertown answered for all of us. We don’t know what was in yours, but ours must have been horse. Old horse, a long time dead.

Cap rolled up his eyes and swallowed hard. No; it aint horse: it’s rabbit; but a natural good eater easy gets used to rabbits that might have lost their lives some little time back. Besides, if a rabbit’s tuckered when he gets killed, he tastes kind of lively. I don’t say but these was both kind of overkept and tuckered too; but on the other hand, look at all the flavor they gain by it.

Weaver stared at him incredulously. "Don’t they taste horrible to you?"

Cap seemed to consult his inwards judicially. No, not horrible exactly. I’ve had rabbit pies that you didn’t have to lift the cover of, because it was already blew off. Maybe you wouldn’t call it no furbelowed lady’s feed, but I’ve seen cheeses that wasn’t, either. The way to learn how to eat a pie like this is to turn your head to one side while you open it, and until it kind of dies down; but that’s only for beginners. Eggs too old I don’t claim I ever could master, even myself; but take a nice old kept-over rabbit and there’s something mighty strong and wholesome about him. It builds up the stomach.

Samuel Wingate of Dorchester cleared his throat. We live and learn. Just let me have my pie back, will you?

Cap stared at him. Your pie? I already et yours. You aint got any! You traded it to me for a glass of rum tomorrow; and when you make a bargain, you got to keep it. Don’t they learn you no morals at Harvard College?

Sam was silent, and Cap conferred privily with Hunk, while I removed the crust from my pie and tried it. As Cap had intimated, it was not as bad as it smelled. Neither was it good.

Cap spoke benevolently to my friends. This is how we figure it: all these pies belong to I and Hunk, but we wouldn’t want to take advantage of a lot of nice young fellers—not if their education had been kind of neglected along some lines. If you fellers want to trade for what we got left, we’ll trade. There’s still enough of ’em so’s each of you can have half a pie. You can have ’em back for a cigarro apiece, payable tomorrow night when you get your rum.

CHAPTER III

WORD SPREAD RAPIDLY, seemingly, concerning my amiable and eccentric acquaintances; for when Hunk and Cap returned from Boston at dusk on the following day, there were as many as twenty undergraduates, a few of them unknown to me, lounging on the grass before the house in which I lived. As soon as Cap came in sight at the end of the street, we saw that he intended to keep his agreement. Over his shoulder was a canvas sling; and in the sling, resting above his left hip, was a five-gallon keg. Hunk was laden with a number of lesser bundles, among them a paper cylinder the size of a small cannon. Evidently their skins had sold well in Boston.

These two friends of mine, it was easy to see, had made a strong and favorable impression in a short time; for Marsh and Wingate and the others hailed them profanely, asking how much rabbit pie they’d eaten during the day, and saying they should have been at Commons for supper, as we’d had a poison ivy soup that they’d no doubt have found appetizing.

We’ve got your cigarros, Sam Wingate told Cap. Knowing your tastes, we had ’em made specially for you out of horse hair and hoof parings.

That’s good, Cap said. That’ll be a nice change from the chopped fish skins and oakum that us country fellers have to smoke. He looked apprehensively up and down the street. Listen! We only got five gallons in this here keg, and I been lugging it five miles, so I got a good deal of a thirst. There aint more’n enough to give us a couple all round, so let’s get out of sight somewheres and drink it pretty quick. If we don’t, we’ll have the whole college wanting a taste of it, and there wont be enough left for us to do more than spill on our chins.

There was some truth in what he said, for already our numbers had been augmented by other acquaintances of mine; so after Cap had dispatched Wingate and Marsh for jugs of hot water and an empty mixing-bucket, we trooped upstairs to my room and disposed ourselves as best we could—most of us on the floor.

Cap placed his keg upon a table; slapped it affectionately. This here’s the medicine for food-poisoning, like what you fellers prob’ly got from your insides not being built up strong and seasoned. It aint no ordinary rum, that’s had all the good taken out of it by being strained and doctored and allowed to grow weak with age. This here’s third-run rum, real powerful, more like food than drink. When you drink it, you can taste it. Rum’s intended to take hold of you, and that’s what this does. There aint no way of concealing what it is, the way you can with old, weak-kneed rum. Why, this rum, you could put onions in it, or the powerfulest dead fish, and couldn’t taste a thing different about it! It’s real honest rum! His eye fell on my wash-bowl and pitcher in the corner. Here, gimme that pitcher! First we’ll try it raw; then we’ll butter it, and you can see what I mean.

Worrying the bung from the keg, he decanted some of the contents into the pitcher. The room, on the instant, was permeated with an odor like that of a damp and dirty cellar in which quantities of molasses have become sour, mouldy and pungent.

Cap raised the pitcher to his lips. When he lowered it, his eyes were watery, and he gasped spasmodically, like a dying haddock.

He handed it to the man beside him. Now you try it, but don’t spill none of it on you. You’re a nice-dressed little gentleman, and you don’t want holes et in your clothes. He turned to Hunk. Don’t waste time unwrapping that butter and the rest of the stuff we got in Boston. This rum’s more penetrating than what I figured on.

§

When Marsh and Wingate returned with the required utensils, they found us garrulous and in a glow from our single swallow of Cap’s remedy for food-poisoning.

Cap seized a bucket and went to work. In it he put two cups of maple sugar, added an inch of hot water and stirred until the sugar was dissolved. He poured in two quarts of rum, added a lump of butter the size of his fist, threw in a handful of powdered cinnamon; then filled the bucket to the brim with steaming hot water. So briskly did he stir the mixture that it splashed his shirt. And as we passed him our cups to be filled, he lectured us on the subject of hot buttered rum.

This here, he said, "aint the proper way to make it. I put hot water in this here, but what you ought to have is hot cider. You take three or four drinks of this, made the right way, and you don’t worry about what kind of food you’re eating, or about anything else, either. You can’t even remember what you et five minutes after you et it.

And it aint a temporary drink, like most drinks. That’s on account of the butter. No matter how much you drink of anything else, it’ll wear off in a day or so; but you take enough hot buttered rum and it’ll last you pretty near as long as a coonskin cap. Fellers up our way drink it when they’re going out after catamounts, on account of catamount-hunting being hard work and requiring considerable persistence. After a man’s had two-three drinks of hot buttered rum, he don’t shoot a catamount: all he’s got to do is walk up to him and kiss him just once; then put him in his bag, all limp.

The rum in the drinks which Cap passed us had been miraculously changed. The mixture seemed mild and sweet—as harmless-tasting as a soothing syrup. Murmurs of pleasure arose from my friends as they sampled it; and the glances turned toward Cap were almost affectionate.

At their gratified murmurs, Cap scooped up a cupful for himself and drained it; then stood with eyes upraised, meditating. Yes, he admitted, that aint bad! A few of those and you could play with me like a kitten. His mind seemed to slip off at a tangent. Hunk, give Langdon Towne that stuff we got in Boston and tell him what we thought up for him.

Hunk picked up the paper cylinder which had struck me with its resemblance to a small cannon. He cleared his throat in evident embarrassment. That rabbit pie last night——

Don’t beat about the bush! Cap interrupted. You Harvard fellers can’t get good food out of the folks that run this college without you make it plain how rotten it is. That’s what you thought, wasn’t it, Hunk?

Yes, Hunk said. "It seemed to us that it doesn’t do much good to go around complaining about bad food. That’s why——"

Again Cap broke in on him. "What Hunk means is that you got to show ’em what you think about it—show ’em hard and quick, so’s they can’t make any mistake about the way you feel. S’pose a feller says a lot of things to you that you don’t like: you can reason with him all day without getting anywheres; but if you crack him on the jaw, he understands the way you feel about him, and he’s apt to be a little more careful. Wasn’t that what you had in mind, Hunk?"

Yes, Hunk said. We kind of figured that if we got some good stout paper——

Cap stopped him. Wait a minute! You aint telling this right! You aint used to talking, like what I am. Here, bring up those cups and let’s have just the merest taste of this rum before it cools off.

We crowded around him, my friends abusing him as freely as though they had known him all their lives. They called him an old Senior Sophister; an old Butter Whelk.

They hurled questions at him, demanding to be told whether a conscience invincibly erroneous may be blameless; whether private profit ought to be the chief end of moral actions; whether the dissolution of solids in corrosive liquors is performed by attraction.

They urged him to go ahead and explain himself in English instead of using Maine dialect as heretofore.

Cap drained his own cup and whacked it on the table. With fumbling hands he set about mixing a second bucketful, and as he mixed, he discoursed. I dunno nothing about them erroleous consciences or roguish liquors, because I aint never had dealings with no such things; but me and Hunk have given considerable thought to this moral action I’m talking about, and if you listen, you’ll get some private profit out of it.

They cheered him lustily.

We figured it all out while we was walking into Boston. I was kind of polite about those rabbit pies last night; but we’re better acquainted now, so I don’t mind saying they’d ’a’ made a pole-cat think he hadn’t never smelled nothing. What you fellers want to do is make this clear to the folks that run Harvard College, and we figured how to do it, didn’t we, Hunk?

Hunk just looked at him reproachfully.

Yes, Cap went on, Langdon Towne knows how to draw, because me and Hunk, we’ve watched him and helped him. We figured if Langdon Towne drew a nice big picture of Harvard College offering a supper to a pole-cat, and the pole-cat being kind of strangled by the smell——

The rest of Cap’s speech was lost in a tumult of cheers and laughter. The next thing I knew Cap and Hunk had peeled a sheet of heavy white cartridge paper from Hunk’s cannon-like cylinder and were holding it flat against the wall, while somebody else thrust a black crayon into my hand.

I stood before the cartridge paper, a little unsteady on my feet, and marked off the points of the drawing as well as I could. To represent the Harvard Overseers, I blocked out a man in Pilgrim dress, holding a dish in his extended hand; and opposite him I lightly sketched a bushy-tailed pole-cat clutching his nose with a paw and shrinking disgustedly from the proffered plate.

To persons slightly in liquor, matters of little humor can seem irresistibly droll; and this was the case now. As the figures developed, my audience howled and slapped themselves, rolling on the floor with uncontrollable mirth; and I, too, felt I was producing a masterpiece of comicality.

When I stepped back to look at the sketch and incidentally wipe the tears from my eyes, I found, standing close behind me, a person I had not before seen. I took him for an undergraduate, for he seemed no older than others in the room. His thin face was pale and a little pock-marked; and his eyebrows were so prominent and his eyes so small that there was a peering look to him, almost as though he stared inquisitively at life through quizzing glasses. His dress was elaborate for an undergraduate, being of rich dark brown broadcloth, with a waistcoat of orange watered silk.

That’s not bad, you know, he said to me. Not bad at all. He fingered his lower lip. What would you think if this gentleman—he lightly tapped the figure of the Pilgrim—were half concealed in the entrance of the dining hall? Then there’d be no opportunity for a misunderstanding.

He was right, of course. I went at it again, outlining the end of the Commons building, so that the Pilgrim’s upper body seemed to be leaning from the open door.

While my audience whooped, the inquisitive-faced young man made another suggestion. Try putting the dish in his other hand, and having him hold to the door-jamb with the hand nearer you. Wouldn’t that give it more life?

I did as he suggested, and was enraptured at the vitality which the sketch took on. With that I went to blacking it in, and in no time at all it seemed to me not only completed but perfect.

Now, Cap said, we’ll all have another little drink, and then I and Hunk’ll carry it out and nail it up where people can see it. Where you want it nailed? Against the President’s front door?

Disregarding the turmoil around us, the pale young man nodded and smiled at me. That’s really good. Let me take your crayon. I’ll show you something—just a trick, but you might find it use ful.

I gave him the crayon. Stepping close to my drawing, he made a single S-shaped line on the Pilgrim’s cheek. The face as I had drawn it was merely stern and somewhat cadaverous. That one crayon stroke made it sly, narrow-minded, hypocritical, contemptuous, selfish, cruel.

I gazed from this surprisingly made-over face to the thin, inquisitive features of the stranger. Where’d you learn to do that?

Oh, he said, I’ve been at it since I was twelve years old. My stepfather——

He stopped suddenly. So, too, did the laughter and shouting in the room, which had rung in my ears like the roaring of breakers on a beach. In the quiet that ensued, I heard a measured knocking at the door. This was what I had feared before Cap’s buttered rum had robbed me of my prudence. I knew, now, that any such gathering as this must inevitably bring down the college authorities upon us; and I saw, too late, that I had been a fool.

Seeing all the eyes in the room turned toward me, I rubbed my hand over my face in an attempt to clear my mind of rum-fumes; then hoarsely called, Come in.

The door swung open to reveal, in the light of the flickering candles, the spare, stooped form of Belcher Willard, my tutor. At sight of him those who were on the floor scrambled upright with a sound of thumping and rustling, to stand in respectful silence, as required by the college laws.

Cap and Hunk dropped the drawing which they had been holding against the wall. In the stillness I could hear it rolling itself up, as though to hide from this representative of our governing body.

Willard came in among us and walked straight to the table, on which were the keg, the pails of greasy liquid and a score of soiled tin cups. When he raised his eyes from that odorous and offensive chaos, he looked hard at the surrounding circle of faces; then fixed his attention on me.

Langdon Towne, he said, you are familiar with the laws of this college. No undergraduate shall keep by him brandy, rum or any other distilled spirituous liquors. Whosoever shall transgress against this law shall have the said liquor that is found with him taken from him, and disposed of by the President and Tutors; and he shall be further punished not exceeding five shillings.

Before I could reply, Cap Huff cleared his throat noisily. "That aint Langdon Towne’s rum. That’s my rum. I paid five shillings for that rum—a shilling a gallon—and three shillings for the keg. I’ll give it to the President if he needs it; but he can’t take it and dispose of it without my say-so."

Willard looked at him from under beetling brows. You are not a member of this Society!

Well, no, I aint, Cap admitted. I aint a member of any society. I just stopped in to let Langdon Towne know the salmon was biting in Kittery, and if I’d known there was any feeling against rum in these parts, I wouldn’t have brought this keg here.

Willard set his lips tight together. The laws of this Society further say, that if any scholar shall entertain at his chamber or familiarly associate with any person of loose or ill character, he shall be punished by the President and Tutors not exceeding five shillings; and if he persist in so doing he shall be publicly admonished, degraded or expelled, according to the aggravation of his offence.

Cap just stood there, scratching his head.

Sir, I said, Cap Huff isn’t a loose or ill character—not according to my lights.

The lights of your generation, Willard replied, are false and audacious, and repugnant to the fundamental principles of wise and proper government.

I saw Cap stoop hastily and pick up my drawing. I guess we’ll be moving along, he said. Hunk, you take all your stuff and I’ll take the keg. We better be getting back to Kittery. To Willard he added mildly, I kind of forced myself on Langdon Towne and these young fellers here. They aint done nothing but drink a little of my rum, and there aint no way to keep young fellers from drinking rum sometimes, no matter how many laws you make.

Willard looked disagreeable. Your philosophical disputations: have no interest for me. He stretched out a bony hand and with his forefinger tapped the drawing which Cap was attempting to stuff beneath his coat. What is this?

Cap put it behind his back. That’s mine.

Indeed! Willard said. Indeed! Permit me to doubt it. Permit me also to remind you that the President or Tutors may require suitable assistance from any scholar for the preservation of the good order of the College; and if anyone so required shall refuse to give his assistance, it shall be looked upon as a high misdemeanor and a great contempt of the authority of the College, and be punished by degradation or expulsion.

Cap looked at him and breathed hard. You mean if these boys don’t help you to take my property away from me by attacking me, you’ll up and raise all that hell with ’em?

Give it to him, Cap, I said.

Cap gave the roll of paper to Willard, who opened it. He slowly raised his eyes to mine. Who did this?

That’s mine, Cap repeated quickly. I figured it out.

I thought of it first, Hunk Marriner said.

The stranger who had altered the expression on the Pilgrim’s face stepped close to Willard. This is beside the point, he said mildly. It’s plain to be seen these gentlemen aren’t artists, though they have other admirable qualities. I think this will settle the matter. He leaned over and scratched a few lines on the margin of the drawing. Miraculously, the lines flowed together to form a likeness of Belcher Willard; a likeness so kindly and flattering that all of Willard’s grim austerity was transformed into something almost beautiful.

Willard rolled up the drawing and set his fists on his hips. He looked from the stranger to me and back again. Most opportune! Suspiciously opportune! This Society seems to have become a resort for characters who incite our members to luxury, intemperance or ruin. At whose invitation did you——

My name, sir, the young man said, is Copley. John Singleton Copley of South Boston.

Willard laughed sourly. I regret, sir, you are not a member of this Society, so that you could be dealt with as you deserve. He once more scanned the rest of us with a hard eye. As for those of you who are students at Harvard College, you will report at my rooms at five tomorrow afternoon for discipline.

CHAPTER IV

IT WAS LATE IN JULY when the college authorities notified my father that I had been placed on probation—not so much for my own sins, but as an object-lesson to the many undergraduates who were leaning more and more toward extravagances, irregularities and disorders. Probably, the authorities intimated, I would be allowed to return in the autumn, but possibly I might not.

To me this decision seemed so unjust that I hoped with all my heart I had seen the last of Harvard College; the more so as my father was in a great rage with me. He spoke his mind about the evils of drink and bad companions; but his bitterest remarks were directed against my seeming determination to waste my days and bring shame on my family by frittering away my time on an unmanly pursuit.

We’ve got a position to maintain in this community, he said. "We’ve reached it by hard work, and by living in fear of the Lord. Your grandfather took his living off the land, and so did his father and his father’s father. They labored from sunup to sundown; and by the sweat of their brows they fed their families, built snug houses, and laid aside a little from year to year. The money they made, and my own efforts, have given us our rope-walk and the house we live in. If it hadn’t been for the toil of generations of hard-working men, Langdon, you’d never have had the chance to go to Harvard—the chance to excel all the rest of us in property and position. And now you’ve had the chance, you’ve been throwing it away by fiddling with pencils and crayons—by making hen-tracks on a piece of paper!

"Do you think that’s any way to retain the respect of this community? Do you think you can support a family? How do you think the rest of us would feel if we had to see people’s fingers pointed at you—if we had to hear ’em say: ‘There goes Towne’s boy: he draws pictures!’

What do you think your great great grandfather would have said to you for it? He was the first settler in this region. He was Ensign of the town of Kittery! He’d have stood no such nonsense, and neither will I.

Well, sir, I said, I’m sorry for what’s happened, and I’m willing to work as hard as anyone, but I’d do a lot better if I worked at something I liked.

Pah! my father cried. Where’d we be if we did what we liked! I’d like to be a rich merchant in Boston, with a score of ships at sea! We don’t work because we like it, but because we must!

Yes, sir, I agreed, but Mother says my great great grandfather wouldn’t go to church, and drank rum, and went off and fought the Indians every time there was a chance; so he must have done what he liked occasionally.

My father was only the angrier. Wasn’t it his duty to fight the Indians?

People don’t seem to consider it their duty nowadays, I reminded him. About the only ones who go to fight the French and Indians are those who enjoy going, or those who make more by going than they could by staying home.

I wont argue the point, Langdon! my father said. I’d rather be dead in my grave than see you mincing around this town, drawing pictures and being supported like a female relative. Tomorrow you’ll pack your duds and go to your grandfather’s house, where you’ll be out of reach of rowdies like Hunk Marriner and Cap Huff. You’ll help your grandfather cultivate that farm, and you’ll do it with a good grace, or he’ll take a whip to you, old as you are! Yes, and I’ll thank him for doing it!

There wasn’t any choice. I knew that my mother and my brothers thought my father too hard on me; but they didn’t dare oppose him, any more than I did; so I went to Pipestave Landing.

§

I loathed the back-breaking slavery of farm life—the eternal brain-numbing monotony of crawling out of bed at dawn, half dead with sleep, to water the cattle, clean out their stalls, hoe the interminable rows of corn and beans, scythe the endless fields, pitch countless tons of hay from field to rick and from rick to barn, grub up alders, transport rocks from the fields to the long gray walls around them, split stove-wood, draw the water, milk the cows, currycomb the horses, oil the harness and do all the other chores that a farmer must, or be swallowed by his acres.

I hated to sit down to my meals, drenched with sweat, too tired to say anything except Pass the butter. I hated the waves of weariness that swept over me each night, as soon as my supper was eaten, so that I, like everyone else in the house, was glad to stumble upstairs to bed.

I hated my hot room beneath the eaves; I even hated the leaden slumber that brought surcease from my labors, but no rest.

I got no time to sketch the scenes around me, though they seemed all day long to intrigue me—the long reaches of the Piscataqua, running down toward Portsmouth; the squat gundelos with lateen sails that came to the landing with their loads of goods for the back country; the small white houses on the Sligo shore across the river; the woods and skies and shadows of morning and noon and eventide. By and by, too, my hands were so calloused and my fingers so stiffened, I doubted they would hold a pencil.

What made my hatred of this drudgery almost unbearable was the impossibility of seeing Elizabeth Browne. I might, I think, have kicked over the traces and gone down to Portsmouth to see her if it hadn’t been for my father’s remark about the disgrace I had brought on my family.

What I had done at Cambridge had not, I knew, been disgraceful. I had been foolish, as most of my classmates had been at one time or another; and I had unjustly been made to suffer while others, equally guilty, had been allowed to go unpunished and even unrebuked. Yet my father’s ratings had made a coward of me where Elizabeth was concerned—or perhaps it is fairer to say that my infatuation for her had made a coward of me. To put it bluntly, I dared not see her until I was sure I ran no risk of losing her.

My position was doubly insecure because her father was not only an Episcopalian, whereas my family were Congregationalists, but was also rector of Queen’s Chapel—the church attended by all the big-wigs of Portsmouth, from Governor Benning Wentworth down. New England Episcopalians, as a rule, despised all other sects as being uncouth persons, devoid of social graces; and all other sects hated Episcopalians as being little better than Papists.

Worse, I was a resident of Kittery, a place held ignoble and clownish by every sprig of family in Portsmouth. I think it is safe to say I would never have met Elizabeth Browne if I hadn’t been a student at Harvard; and I knew I was tolerated by her family because I was on good terms with the many Harvard graduates and undergraduates in Portsmouth—all of them Episcopalians and all of them propertied.

Consequently I was only too sure that if Elizabeth’s family thought of me as being not only disgraced, but disgraced by Harvard, I would be forever barred from seeing her.

It was late in August when New England had the news that resulted in my release from Pipestave Landing. This was the capture, by General Amherst and his army of British and Provincial troops, of Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, strongholds of the French and Indians during our long wars with them. Even at Pipestave Landing we could hear the firing of cannon and the ringing of bells with which Portsmouth received the news—cannon firing and bell ringing that continued for twenty-four hours, so great was the rejoicing at this victory.

Two weeks later, early in September, I had a letter from my father. Because of the victory at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, he wrote, confidence had returned and trade had picked up wonderfully. Every merchant in Portsmouth was planning to build a ship, so there was more rope to be made than ever before in the town’s history. My help, he said, was needed in the rope-walk, and he would be glad to have me come home at once.

Evidently he had forgiven me, and my difficulty at Harvard was henceforth to be treated not as complete disgrace but as something that could even be overlooked and at least not mentioned.

That afternoon I was on my way down river; and as would have been the case with any young man in my position, my own family came last in my thoughts. My first thought had been for Elizabeth Browne; and the first thing I meant to do in Portsmouth was to see her.

CHAPTER V

THE GUNDELO that carried me to Portsmouth found an anchorage beside the long wharf at the foot of Buck Street, where the brigs and ships were tied up as thick as bones in a shad. I left my bag of clothes at the Seaman’s Tavern and set off up Buck Street, in high spirits at the thought of seeing Elizabeth again.

To those who think New England towns are drab and colorless, filled with sour-faced folk in stuffy raiment, Buck Street at eight o’clock on a warm evening would be an amazement. It is narrow and winding; crowded with warehouses, shops, taverns and residences. Odors of rum, coffee, lemons and spices lie thick along it, as clearly defined as the layers of cream and jam in a Boston pie; and due to one of the many singular customs of the town, it is as full of people as of odors. Every night the lively grandees of Portsmouth make a promenade of Buck Street, gabbling and laughing, their sticks and high-heeled shoes clicking on the pavement, their silks rustling, their powdered hair and shoe-buckles gleaming in the light from tavern doors and shop windows.

Merchants, shipbuilders, lawyers and bankers are there with their wives and daughters: naval officers from the King’s ships: army officers from Fort William and Mary in scarlet and gold, their swords clutched tight beneath their arms: members of the King’s Council, long crimson-lined coats swinging from their shoulders. All of Portsmouth, as the saying goes, whether Episcopalians, Congregationalists or dissenting Congregationalists, stroll up and down Buck Street in seeming amity on every pleasant evening.

At a distance, among the throng, I saw the Reverend Arthur Browne and his wife, but neither Elizabeth nor her sister Jane was with them. So, therefore, filled with eagerness and a lover’s doubts, I hurried to the Brownes’ house on Court Street; and as I had hoped, Elizabeth, being the youngest of the daughters, opened the door.

Well, I declare! she cried. It’s Langdon Towne, back from the dead! She looked at me indignantly from the corners of her eyes—one of her ways that I found fascinating. Never a word out of you for weeks! Are those the manners they teach you at Harvard?

I had no mind for small talk. The sight of her seemed to have exploded something within me, so that my throat and brain were choked; and I stood there like a fool, gawking at her. Her hair was a glossy black, shot with gleams of shimmering purple when sunlight fell across it; and her eyes, which seemed enormous, were black as well, but a fathomless, velvety black in which swam flecks of gold. Her face was slender, like a narrow heart, and her eyes slanted upward a little at the outer corners; while her mouth, which was large, was a brilliant crimson against the clear pallor of her skin. Like her eyes, her mouth had a gay quirk at the corners; so that her expression, even when serious, was half amused.

She laughed a little at my silence, and pretended to turn away. Then I caught at her hand, but she snatched it from me and brushed a heavenly finger across my lips in silent warning. With that she moved quickly toward the door of the back parlor, where I heard the murmur of voices.

When I followed Elizabeth into that small, candle-lighted room, I saw why she had not been among the strollers on Buck Street; for three persons sat there chatting. One was her older sister Jane, and another was the man to whom Jane was betrothed—Sam Livermore, a Harvard graduate and a good friend of mine: the same Sam Livermore who later became King’s Attorney for the Province of New Hampshire.

When my eyes fell on the third person, my first sensation was one of amazement and pleasure, for it was he who had stood beside me, two months before, and taken the responsibility for my drawing of the Pilgrim Father and the disgusted pole-cat: then politely given a name which I had never before heard, but was to hear countless times in the future—John Singleton Copley.

Before Elizabeth could speak, Copley jumped from his chair, seized my hand and shook it warmly. Well, well! he said, this is delightful! I tried to see you the day after we had our little trouble, but they told me you were in difficulties. I hope they weren’t serious!

Of course I was instantly jealous, and Copley probably saw that I was; but when I said somewhat morosely that my difficulties had been of no consequence, he went out of his way to respond with kind and friendly speeches.

Why, he said to Elizabeth and Jane and Sam, I didn’t know Towne was a friend of yours! Ever since I saw him in Cambridge, I’ve wanted to see him again and urge him to do something with his talent for drawing.

Elizabeth and her sister raised their eyebrows. They might almost have said aloud, Oh, indeed! We thought you meant to speak of something worth hearing.

Then Copley gaily went on to give an account of Cap’s and Hunk’s visit to me, and what he’d heard of the results thereof.

Sam chuckled and slapped his knee at Copley’s recital; but Elizabeth and her sister seemed to find nothing amusing in it.

Horrible creatures! Elizabeth exclaimed. Who were they, Langdon?

Why, I said, they weren’t horrible! They were Hunk Marriner and Cap Huff.

Elizabeth made a gesture of distaste. Oh, fie! Coarse and dreadful, she said. Both profane swearers; and who in Portsmouth doesn’t know Cap Huff has been in jail!

But Elizabeth, I protested. It wasn’t Cap’s fault he was put in jail. He was put there for talking against Benning Wentworth.

Elizabeth made an outcry. La, what spurious logic! If Cap Huff talked against Benning Wentworth, it was certainly Cap Huff’s fault, wasn’t it?

No, Elizabeth. It was Benning Wentworth’s fault for deserving to be talked against.

Langdon Towne! she exclaimed. What perversity! You know those vulgar creatures have done nothing for you except encourage you in idleness and folly. How can you speak for them after the trouble they made for you in Cambridge?

I sat embarrassed and speechless; I’d hoped she didn’t know anything about my Cambridge troubles. Copley spoke up for me. I think you’re a little hard on Mr. Towne’s associates. I do indeed! They were kind young men, and most amusing. I found them so, and so did all the others there that night. Of course we’d none of us argue that they’d shine before the ladies; but if we restrict our acquaintances and friends to the highest circles, our knowledge of the world and of life is bound to suffer. He smiled at Elizabeth. Don’t you think so?

Elizabeth made no answer.

It seems to me, Copley continued, that it’s peculiarly essential for an artist to know all sorts of people, and to know them well. It’s his business to portray life; and if he isn’t familiar with all phases of life, he’s bound to make a failure of portraying it. Don’t you think that’s a reasonable statement?

Langdon isn’t an artist, Elizabeth said primly, and added with some dryness, I thought, He lives in Kittery—but when he leaves Harvard he’ll make his home in Portsmouth. Don’t you hope to, Langdon?

"But he is an artist, Copley protested. He has a true eye for light and shadow, and a fine manner of composition. He has an unusual gift, and a man can’t ignore a gift. He can’t hide his light under a bushel."

I was so pleased with what this friendly young man said of me that for the moment I forgot Elizabeth. Why, I said to him, you must be already an artist yourself! That accounts for the line you put in the face I drew!

Sam laughed. Mr. Copley’s a pupil of Joseph Blackburn. That’s why he’s here: to talk with Mr. Browne about arranging sittings for Mr. Blackburn.

That meant something to me; for Blackburn was the foremost portrait painter in North America. To have words of praise from one of Blackburn’s pupils was more than I had ever expected. I could only stare humbly at Copley.

All you need, he said pleasantly, "is study and practice. What have you